


orchid eyes and smoky tides

by queenmcgonagall



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:02:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmcgonagall/pseuds/queenmcgonagall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a bakery-boy with poems embedded in his skin and an artist with a longing soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	orchid eyes and smoky tides

It’s a Sunday.

The rain pours down in sheets. It’s a dull roar on the roofs of buildings around theirs, a slight pinging that rings in Louis’s ears. There are tiny water droplets on the leafy plants on the balcony; lusty red roses drooping their heads in mourning at the downpour that overflows their pots and soaks the dirt. Louis relishes the smell of wet soil that wafts in the open doors. The sky is gray as steel, not a break of sunshine and every so often a small rumble of thunder rolls through the clouds. 

The streets of Paris below their flat are wet and shiny, empty, the pavement dotted with black umbrellas and the occasional red one catching his eye, a splash of color in the otherwise gray landscape.  The distant swish of a car going by on the streets is the only indication that another human exists in the city being flooded by relentless rain.

Louis sits on the cold wooden floor with a paintbrush in hand. His bones ache with a need to paint something, anything, and he wishes Harry was here because Harry is always willing to stretch out, pliant, and let Louis shape the contours of his body with his eyes, peel back his skin to look at his heart and lay red ventricles and atriums on a plain canvas.

Harry is cherry lips filled in by cadmium red; he is eyes of hunter green and Indian sun gold. Harry is lavender laughs and setting sunsets. Louis stares at a paint pallet and wonders if there is any color in the world that shines as brightly as Harry.

He thinks that Harry must live inside him, that he exists in the tendons that guide Louis’s hand; he is the breath in Louis’s lungs, filling up and existing and driving life and Louis wonders how he lived before he met the bakery-boy who wrote poems in the flour on the table.

And then the boy who wrote poems in flour opens the door to the flat and shakes the rain out of his hair and Louis smiles a smile of sapphire and Spanish carmine at the boy with the cadmium lips. The rain has soaked Harry’s thin shirt; it sticks to his body and Louis shamelessly lets his eyes rove over the defined muscles showing through and Harry smirks and pulls his shirt up over his head, letting it splat wetly on the floor.

His hands are ice, like he plunged them in a bucket of frozen water and his lips are chilly on Louis’s but Louis swears despite the slate gray of the world outside, there is sunshine on his skin and his lips.

Harry’s like a puppy-dog, splayed across Louis’s lap and he plucks at Louis’s shirt and smiles through half-lidded eyes. Raindrops cling to his dark lashes and his eyes are glossy and his skin is warm and dusty and he smells like apple turnovers and Louis buries his nose in café noir curls, inhales his lover’s scent that lives in their sheets and in the clothes in Louis’s closet and is the truest definition of what Louis would call home.

“Hey, you,” he whispers, muffled in Harry’s hair and he feels Harry shiver in his lap at the sensation of his cool breath on his neck and he chuckles a little bit, the curls moving with his breath.

Harry turns over in his lap and long fingers lift Louis’s shirt and those icy lips are on his stomach and Louis flinches and laughs quietly and Harry bites gently at the soft skin on Louis’s tummy and says ‘hello, dear’ and it’s the  _dear_   that sits on Louis’s heart and he bites his lip to keep from smiling.

Harry looks up and blinks heavily at Louis, amazon-green eyes soft and adoring and Louis counts the tiny freckles on his nose. Fourteen in all. The tiny gold dots stand out against his porcelain skin.

‘How was the bakery?’ Louis asks, his fingers pulling through the knotted and wet curls. He scratches Harry’s scalp slightly and watches in amusement as Harry relaxes in his lap, limbs loose and gangly across Louis’s bare legs.

‘Lovely, of course. Saw Niall. He says hi, wants to have dinner with us next week, okay?’ Harry’s voice is scratchy, like he has flour in his throat and he coughs wetly.

‘Okay. How is chapter five coming?’ Louis says, stroking the soft skin behind Harry’s ears. Harry sighs contently and his eyes slip shut as he leans into Louis’s stomach and lazily presses his lips into the golden skin hid by the soft t-shirt (Harry’s t-shirt) that Louis is wearing.

‘Good.’ Harry smiles softly at something in his mind that Louis can’t see. ‘Remember when we went to the coast and ate biscotti in that restaurant on that one street? That’s where I’m at.’

‘Ahh, yes,’ Louis laughs softly. He remembers. He remembers the gold in Harry’s eyes and the dusty lilac sound of his laugh that coats Louis’s bones. He remembers a young Harry with pink cheeks and a sixteen year old dimple, stretched out in the sheets of the hotel room, pupils blown and mouth wide and gaping as a shy Louis mouthed at his pale trembling thighs and sucked raging bruises in the shape of love on the canyons of his boney gracefully childlike hips. They were new love on the coast, innocent and naïve, when Louis’s painting had yet to destroy him, when Harry’s poems were quiet words spoken to Louis in the dead of night.

Harry used to take a ball point pen from the bedside dresser and write the words of his poet’s heart on the side of Louis’s knee and grace the tender and raw skin with his cadmium lips. And only Louis’s knees would know the quiet loveliness of the words that swirl in Harry’s blood and his knees would keep the secret. Harry used to trace the veins of Louis’s wrists, tiny maps of his imperial blue blood and whisper against the soft skin ‘ _remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now’_  and Louis would smile softly and tease Harry for quoting Sylvia Plath and Harry would blush and kiss crimson glory red lips with a cadmium mouth.

And now Harry is writing a book of their love and its ink and paper on the typewriter in the quiet room at the end of the hall. And it’s permanent and Louis’s not sure how he feels about it, because their love used to be for the dusty roses on their balcony to witness lovemaking on a Tuesday afternoon. Their love used to be between Louis’s knees and Harry’s mouth and now their love is being written for someone else and someone else will know and someone else will read it and Louis sometimes wants to tuck Harry back under his skin and hold him there.

Harry rolls off his lap and peels off his wet trousers, pants sliding down his pale thighs until he’s sprawled naked on top of Louis’s blank sheets of paper and he looks sinful and tempting and Louis grabs his pad of paper and charcoal. He taps the charcoal against the lanky valleys of Harry’s pelvic bones, an onyx smear that stands in stark contrast to the ivory skin pulled tautly over titanium bones. Harry squirms under Louis’s gaze and then settles into a relaxed pose when Louis throws him a sharp look. The lines of his arms begin the pose on the starchy paper and they sit there in silence, Harry’s eyes closed, listening to the sound of the rain and Louis admires the Adonis cut of Harry’s stomach. His charcoal scratches on the grainy paper and it’s the only sound except the loveliness of the rain coming down and the soft breaths that huff out of Harry’s nose.

The pale skin of Harry’s chest speaks in jasmine ink to Louis and his palm black with charcoal marks a handprint on the unmarred skin of Harry’s sternum. Harry’s eyes flutter open and he smiles softly at Louis, the dent in his upper lip curling in the way that makes Louis think a tiny elf pressed his fingertip into Harry’s upper lip when he was still a formable creature.

‘You must send my ashes back to the sea because I, I cannot fathom a moment of this existence without knowing you are alive inside it,’ Louis whispers and Harry smiles a dogwood-rose smile and Louis thinks for the 500th time that he is in love with a bakery-boy with words on his skin and love in his heart and that he is the luckiest boy in the world.

Harry leans over, the papers crumpling under his lean body, and he kisses the sharp line of Louis’s shinbone. ‘Back to the waves and wrap me in salt water, you must bury me,’ he laughs quietly. ‘Are we quoting our favorite poets now?’

Louis simply grins and laughs his Tuscan-red laugh that chills Harry’s bones and echoes smoothly into the sound of the rain on the window sills. Harry leans forward and tugs on the bottom of Louis’s t-shirt.

‘Take this off, I feel lonely,’ Harry instructs, his mouth pulling up in a shy smile. He sits up and pulls Louis’s t-shirt over his head and mouths at the golden skin of Louis’s arm as it’s exposed. ‘That’s better.’

He lies back down on the floor, flattening the bent papers underneath him and spreads his legs and Louis’s cock jumps a little bit in his boxers, but he ignores it and picks up his charcoal and paper again as Harry’s eyes slip shut.

Louis considers the small veins running across Harry’s eyelids, a roadmap of spidery iris blue that weaves over the delicate skin. His eyelashes flutter on his cheeks and Louis thinks that Harry is the tide on the beaches of Louis’s imagination; he comes and he goes and Louis sits like a shipwrecked man on the sands of time, waiting for the mast of a ship to appear over a horizon trimmed in the Mikado yellow of a sunset.

And this is how it goes: Louis burns toast and brings it to Harry in the small room at the end of the hall where the only noise is the clacking of Harry’s typewriter and he puts his nose in chocolate hair, but Harry doesn’t notice and his heart sits in the typewriter tray and the words are draining out of long fingertips. The diamond links that hold Louis’s heart to Harry’s heart jangle a little like they’re unsure of their solidity and Louis knows that in that moment, Harry belongs to a world that Louis can only stand at the window of.

Louis will look over Harry’s shoulder and see words that hold no meaning to him, but Harry lovingly caresses the drying ink with a slide of the type writer as he paints his soul onto the blank paper.

 ‘ _we are running out of time and my heels have wings but the broken glory of my gapped melancholy sings ribbons of ecstasy and woodland vale the colour of the smoke in your eyes and I lament the desert of my heart, dry and unforgiving, but you are the violet spring of relief’_

It means nothing to him and yet obviously means the world to Harry and Louis is proud of his bakery-boy with the silver tongue and the jade fingers. So he will retreat to the corner of the room and pick up a pencil and sketch the defined slump of Harry’s long torso as he throws himself into typing the words and the clanking noise of the keys will become the soundtrack to Louis’s life, the squeak of the chair resonating like the slow grind of a cello and the crack of Harry’s back plucking Louis’s heart like the soaring screech of a rosewood violin.

Harry opens his eyes and the scratching of the charcoal halts. Harry’s eyes are dusty with sleep, whispering India-green and there are orchid hollows under his eyes but cadmium lips are red as ever when he says,

‘Kiss me.’

Louis sets aside the charcoal and paper, careful not to smear the etching of his lover’s body on the paper. He puts crimson-glory to the delicate skin on the inside of Harry’s elbow and bites gently at the muscle pulled taut in the crease. Harry smiles down at him.

‘Up here, you twat,’ he chuckles, the dirty luster of his ruby laugh settling in Louis’s skin like the sand settles around him as he waits for Harry’s tide to return to him.

Louis sits up and reaches around Harry for his palette. His fingers dip into Prussian-blue, a color that evokes Louis’s nostalgia for the Harry for yesteryear, the one with the secrets stitched into his heart and his lips on Louis’s ankle. Louis smears the smoky paint on Harry’s closed eyelids and he thinks that Harry looks like a man frozen in time, with his pale skin and the dusky paint settling in the birds-wing creases of his eyelids. The thought scares him, so he lowers his mouth to Harry’s and licks at cadmium red and chases the taste of sugar in Harry’s mouth.

Louis snakes an arm under Harry’s naked torso and gently turns him over and traces a tongue down the knobs of Harry’s eighteen year old spine. The black ink of his tattoo glows darkly against Harry’s pale skin. The gray light of the apartment does nothing to taint the starkness of Harry’s skin stretched over angular bones.

Louis kisses the razor ridges of Harry’s angel-bones, across the glossy tattoo that sits underneath the skin, and then moves lips up to Harry’s ear, nuzzling his nose into the downy curls. He says,

‘Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we’ll never get used to it.’

The words are imprinted on Harry’s skin and on the inside of Louis’s head, words that have been pressed and written and loved into Harry’s flesh so much that Louis has lost count of how many times he’s lovingly passed a pen over Harry’s shoulder and inscribed the last sentences of Harry’s favorite poem onto his tender skin. And now they sit below the surface, permanent and everlasting and Louis prays that this, this feeling of love and everlasting, never leaves and that he never gets used to it.

Harry cranes his head around and stares at Louis, viridian eyes glowing like burnt embers. Louis smiles at him and kisses the pale swell of Harry’s arse, biting gently at the small of his back where he has dimples that Louis’s thumbs fit into perfectly. Louis leans over him and cadmium meets crimson-glory.

And it’s a Sunday afternoon and they make love on a wooden floor while the hushed whisper of rain glosses slowly down the windows.  

The tide washes in and the ochre light of dusk falls upon their naked bodies, the quiet solitude of their aching love a lavender wash of calm. Harry’s large hands count the spaces in between Louis’s ribs and the amber light as the setting sun breaks through the clouds is a golden mist on the fine boning of Harry’s face.

These, our bodies, possessed by light.

Our sighing breath that falls with the moon and rises with the sun and exists in tandem with the tides.

This, the bones of our skeleton, bound in ivory yarn and sewn with the silk of a thousand year old road.

Now tell me that we are moon-stone glass and indigo wind but never broken.

Tell me it is so.

**Author's Note:**

> quotes by Sylvia Plath, Richard Siken, and Tyler Knott.


End file.
